By Uditha Jayasinghe

MAWATHURA, Sri Lanka, Dec 3 (Reuters) – Villagers in Sri Lanka used spades on Wednesday to clear away mud as they searched for the bodies of relatives and friends days after 13 homes were flattened by a landslide in the dead of night caused by a cyclone that killed 474 people.

Cyclone Ditwah barrelled through the Indian Ocean island nation last week, setting off the landslide in the central region of Mawathura that left only a broken window pane, walls of ruined homes, and a twisted red sari buried in the mud.

“We managed to dig out my uncle, his wife, and his mother-in-law last night,” Neil Jayasinghe, who runs a bakery in a nearby town, told Reuters.

“We just wrapped them in a sheet and buried them nearby. There wasn’t even a coffin.”

HUNDREDS KILLED ACROSS SOUT

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